Doctoral Dissertation Research: Socio-Spatial Factors Influencing Prenatal Care Availability, Access, and Use

University Of Kentucky Research Foundation, Lexington KY

Investigators

Abstract

This project explores issues related to immigrant health care through an investigation of the changing socio-spatial relationships (e.g. political, economic, socio-cultural, and geographic) that shape immigrant women's health during pregnancy. Using the case of Haitian migrant farm workers in Immokalee, FL, this research investigates the availability, provision, utilization, and accessibility of prenatal care to immigrant women in order to understand not only the specific issues that these women face in trying to maintain their health during pregnancy, but also the broader political, economic, and social processes that contribute to immigrant women's health disparities across the United States. The research is expected to fill scholarly and clinical gaps in understanding the socio-spatial factors influencing immigrant health, the politics of immigrant health care, rural and minority health disparities, and the emerging impacts of the Affordable Care Act on the health care system more broadly. It also explores the methodological possibilities offered by qualitative GIS to health researchers and planners by producing dynamic maps that show the complex relationship between gender, politics, economics, and health care. Using a critical medical geography framework, the researchers draw from interdisciplinary literatures on healthcare, intersectionality, immigration, and critical GIS. The project has four interrelated aims: First, using archival research and mapping, it explores how the changing politics of immigrant health (and the notion of "deservingness") affect the health care landscape in the United States. Second, it uses interview data from health care providers to explain how the changing politics of immigrant health care affects the provision of care for immigrant women. Third, using feminist qualitative GIS and multi-session in-depth interviewing, the project investigates immigrant women's experiences of the health care system, as well as how these experiences influence where and how they utilize health care services. Finally, it identifies the socio-spatial barriers that immigrant women face in accessing care in an effort to improve health care accessibility in the community.